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Rock

Noel Gallagher Reveals Favorite Oasis Songs, Says He Was ‘A Bit Taken Aback’ By Reunion Tour Ticket Demand

The band's guitarist/songwriter will hit the road with singer Liam Gallagher beginning on July 4.

Oasis
Oasis
Simon Emmett/Press

You never really know how much your fans have missed you until you go away for a while. Even now, nine months after Oasis shocked the world by announcing that they would be reuniting for a summer 2025 stadium tour that nobody thought would ever happen, songwriter/guitarist and occasional lead vocalist Noel Gallagher finds it hard to believe how big a deal it all is.

According to NME, in an interview with one of the magazine’s former photographers, Kevin Cummins, for his new book Oasis: The Masterplan, the elder Gallagher admits that the mad dash to secure tickets for the band’s first gigs since 2009 shocked him. “I thought it’d be a big deal, but I was a bit taken aback by just how much of a big deal it was,” Gallagher, 57, said.


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In an effort to beat the bots and scalpers, the band fronted by Liam Gallagher teamed with Twickets for a scheme meant to block re-sellers posting tickets for profit, warning that those purchases would be cancelled. During the frenzied pre-sale, though, frustrated fans described being in queue for hours on end and often ending up empty-handed for the initial run of U.K. and Irish dates.

In October, Ticketmaster said it would investigate the matter and cancel roughly 50,000 resale tickets that were deemed to have been purchased using techniques that were forbidden for the tour. Those methods typically used by scalpers and bots, included purchasing more than four tickets per household, per show, and using multiple identities to buy up tickets.

Then, in March, the UK’s CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) said that Ticketmaster may have “misled” fans over pricing for the shows; Oasis later issued a statement saying they had no “awareness that dynamic pricing was going to be used” in the sale of tickets for the initial 19 dates. An update to the CMA’s ongoing investigation revealed that Ticketmaster UK may have breached consumer protection law, by “Labelling certain seated tickets as ‘platinum’ and selling them for near 2.5 times the price of equivalent standard tickets, without sufficiently explaining that they did not offer additional benefits and were often located in the same area of the stadium.”

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Though at press time neither the make-up of the rest of the band nor the expected set list has been revealed, Noel may have tipped his hand at which songs will make the cut when Cummins asked him to name his favorite Oasis song. “Can I have more than one? ‘Supersonic’, ‘Some Might Say’, ‘Live Forever’ and ‘Rock’n’Roll Star,” Gallagher said of a handful of the band’s most beloved, frequently performed, songs.

In January, Liam responded to a fan’s dream setlist, telling them “it’s not far off,” when they asked if the unsolicited rundown was “official.” The list had pretty much what you’d expect based on the band’s past setlists, including such live staples as: “Acquiesce,” “Some Might Say,” “Lyla,” “Shakermaker,” “The Hindu Times,” “Cast No Shadow,” “Slide Away,” “Supersonic,” “Morning Glory,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star,” “Cigarettes & Alcohol,” “Don’t Look Back in Anger,” “Live Forever” and “Champagne Supernova.”

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Last month, the band announced that a film documenting the Oasis Live ’25 tour would be created and produced by BAFTA- and Oscar-nominated writer/producer/director Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Spencer, Dirty Pretty Things) and directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace (Meet Me in the Bathroom, Shut Up and Play the Hits). No release date has been announced yet for the untitled film and no further details were revealed about the content of the project that will be distributed by Sony Music Vision.

Oasis have announced 41 dates so far for the tour, which will kick off on July 4 with the first of two shows at Principality Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, before criss-crossing the U.K. in advance of a North American run beginning August 24 in Toronto; the tour will then move on to Mexico City, South Korea, Japan, Australia and South America.

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This article was originally published by Billboard U.S.

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